Ad Astra Observatory

Let me be frank. There are many, many things that need fixing around Hilltop O. Chasing the dome around has been a joy, actually, learning the ropes of this young ship, just beginning to walk.

Her control center is starting to take shape. ‘Ze Space Heater iz plugged into ‘ze Utility outlets, ahem. But, I digress.

I am not 100% sold on this software setup yet, but I like having a reference architecture. Turn this one off, put it on a shelf somewhere, and try out Linux or OSX or we-did-it-all-in-chips-sir… Whatever. Safety. Function.

These guys get paid, though. Yes, good stuff.

Now if I could just put together a stacking solution, I could chew up some of this processing backlog.

Yeah, processing is for rainy days, when the moon is waxing gibbous. It’s the waning days in the moonth that you hunt the sky ocean.

The astronomy gods handed me several clear nights in a row, right around third quarter. Too nice to pass up.

I have discovered, as I’m sure have others before me, that if I am shooting a target that is more or less due east, I rarely have to adjust the dome, and can walk away for a couple hours while the telescope tracks the sky.

Tonight, I decided to try M101, which was a few hours before zenith, and, as is the New ‘Normal’, I dispensed with the 5min images. The seeing around here is just ok, so the stars are going to be huge. I have lots of pixels to work with. I’ll resize it down.

The point is, a few nights in, I cobbled together a set of software, and stumbled through the process of getting configured, and I booted up, called up M101, and started shooting guided 20m subframes of it. That’ll do, pig.

After so many good nights of shooting, I want to see how far I can take this crazy “past zenith” thing, so I will wait for the guider (which is mounted West of the OTA) to go nuts, having crossed behind the shutter.

Edit: Well, I never got there. 🙂 After a full Four Hours of shooting M101, my resolve to see it get lost behind the dome shutter faltered in the face of an early start tomorrow morning and several nights of sleep deprivation finally catching up to me. I went to bed with a smile, though… four hours. wow.

I’m starting to remember being good at this.

The dome encoder showed up today. But that’s another show.

Fly, Cassie. Just fly.